


doubt and other growing things

by fathomfive



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (with both the book and the show), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 04:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19202077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive
Summary: Crawly makes a reasonable suggestion, Aziraphale lies to God, and the first humans fall from grace and into knowledge.The problem with paradise is that once you let people loose in it, it becomes something else entirely.





	doubt and other growing things

Crawly’s problem, when you got right down to it, was that he had a weakness for interesting people. It was the reason his name was Crawly now and not—the other name, the one that held the name of God inside it. He’d hung around with the wrong people, sure. He’d gravitated to the Morningstar because that first among the former angels had something angels didn’t, on the whole, tend to have: ideas. And such ideas they were.

Crawly had been interested. And then he had been doubtful. And then he had been bitter and defiant and very afraid, plummeting backwards from the threshold of Heaven with a fire that had nothing to do with the heat of reentry licking at his essence.

Interesting people. They were what got him into trouble, every time.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t wondered,” he said, to the newest one.

She was a different sort of creature entirely, and therefore very interesting. She looked down at him, on his belly in the grass with morning dew beading on his scales. Then she looked where he was looking: at the Tree, and the red, red fruit it bore. She appeared to be honestly considering his words. It wasn’t her fault; she still had a lot to learn about the world, and Crawly was interesting too.

(That was all he’d wanted, back in the day. To be the kind of person who knew where it was at—and what It was, if he was being honest.)

“I guess I thought I’d get to it eventually,” she said slowly. “There’s still so much to see here, after all.”

“You ask me, it’s all the same,” Crawly said with feigned nonchalance. “Fields and streams and things, every tree as pleasant to the sight as the next. I don’t see why every little thing’s got to be as pleasant to the sight as the next. You know what that is? A lack of imagination.”

“What’s the problem with that?” she said. “We have everything we need.”

“Oh, nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that,” Crawly said. “Only a person could get bored very quickly. ‘S all I’m saying.”

They sat in silence for a while longer, watching the newborn sun run its fingers over everything in Eden. The fruit of the Tree blazed like drops of blood. It was exactly as beautiful as it had been the day before, and the day before that.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Crawly said.

“Eve,” said Eve. “What’s yours?”

“Oh, me? I’m no one important,” Crawly said. Eve tilted her head, regarding him with the thoughtless certainty of someone who had never had to wonder if they were important or not.

“Suppose you tell me anyway,” she said, and it was almost a command.

“I’m called Crawly,” he said. Her eyebrows knitted. “I know, I know,” he said. “I’m thinking of changing it.”

“To what?” she said.

“Not sure yet,” he said. “I expect it’ll come to me.” He unbunched his coils and rose beside her, almost to her shoulder, and then lowered himself back down and glided to the trunk of the Tree. One of the advantages of being a snake was that he could make it look casual.

He draped himself along a low-hanging bough, winding his body around it. “Enough about me, though,” he said. “A smart being like you, Eve, no reason you shouldn’t get a taste of all the Garden has to offer. Why hold back?”

“It’s against the rule,” she said, but she was looking at him, and at the fruit that hung from the bough. “There’s only the one, which means it must be important.”

“Means it must be bloody good fruit,” Crawly said. Eve nodded a little to herself. “This world’s all for you and him,” Crawly went on, “and you can stop at fields and streams and—and little fishes, or you can go for all of it. I mean, why not?”

It was worth noting at this point that Crawly did not know exactly what was going to happen. He had a hunch, but he didn’t _know_.

“I don’t know,” Eve said “But there must be a reason. There wouldn’t be the rule if there wasn’t a reason.”

There were a number of things Crawly wanted to say to that, but he said none of them. Instead he lowered himself a little, to her eye level. “You ssssaid that here you have everything you need,” he hissed softly. “But do you have everything you _want_?”

Eve’s mouth opened just a little. He watched her think.

She had been made, more or less, in the shape of an angel. Crawly wondered if the One who’d made them both considered the changes on this latest model to be an improvement or not. He wondered if, when something went wrong with this lot, that One would forgive them—or crush them back to clay and make something else instead. In those days God was not known for mercy.

“Oh, go on,” he said. He had writhed and burned and howled as he Fell, stripped of his name and twisted into a new form—it hadn’t been that long ago. It still ached.

He said to Eve, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

* * *

The worst had happened, and the Almighty was displeased, and Aziraphale had a feeling he was about to find out whether performance reviews from Upstairs came in any permutation between transcendent bliss and being cast down from on high as a screaming, raging meteor of light and fury. And his wings were in horrible disarray. He had failed, or at least seriously slacked, in his duty as Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, and he was not ready to be judged.

All that considered, he really shouldn’t do what he was about to do.

Adam and Eve were crouched by a hole in the wall that Aziraphale was sure hadn’t been there yesterday. They had their backs to Eden, looking out upon a vast expanse of desert that breathed dry heat like the fires of Below. It seemed to go on in all directions, and it shimmered.

They flinched when he burst through the brush behind them. They straightened as one, Eve a little slower—she was quite far along now, and winced when she had to walk too much. Adam raised his arm a little, between her and Aziraphale, but she lifted her chin and looked straight at him.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. “Dreadfully sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s all right, my dears.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Eve. All of a sudden it was very hard to look at her. She had stopped crying some time ago, but her stern dark eyes were still red in the corners.

“Quite so,” Aziraphale said. “I, ah. That is, I just—I wanted—” He rummaged in his robe, failed to find what he was looking for, and reached out along a metaphysical axis neither Eve nor Adam could perceive but that could be, for mortal convenience, referred to as _sideways_. He drew his sword from the aether. It was heavy in his hand. “You ought to take this,” he said.

Adam stepped close and examined it. “A weapon,” he said. “ _Your_ weapon.” His face took on the look of someone whose mental gears, having been oiled for the first time, were producing some not-quite-comforting noises. Aziraphale nodded in manic agreement.

“Yes, yes, exactly,” he said. “Trust me, you’re going to need it.”

“You mean us to hurt other creatures,” Eve broke in. Her voice was flat. “That’s what weapons are for.” Adam’s hand stole back and caught hers, and squeezed it. Aziraphale could see that they thought they were being furtive. In the unfathomable nexus of divine essence that he had instead of a heart, something twisted painfully. He pushed the sword into Adam’s hand and closed his fingers around it.

“We’ve only just learned,” Adam said, looking intently at him, “how to hurt other creatures, and that it’s wrong. I don’t—” His face threatened to crumple for a few seconds, and Eve drew close and stared defiantly at Aziraphale. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“Tell that to the lions,” Aziraphale said miserably. “It’s not given to us to understand, but there are still plans for you two, there _are_. You can’t let the sun go down on you here.”

Adam waved the sword experimentally, and Aziraphale brightened up a bit. “Besides, it’s ever so useful,” he said. “There’s a trick, it’s really quite easy once you get the hang of it...”

He concentrated. The sword went _whoomph_. Adam yelped and dropped it. Aziraphale waved a hand, extinguishing the flames before they could leave too much of a mark on the plush green carpet of Eden. “Oh dear,” he said.

Adam and Eve looked at Aziraphale. He looked back. There was very little he could say, so he scooped up the sword again and held it out. Adam hesitated, and then took it from his hand.

Aziraphale wrapped his hands around Adam’s and concentrated again. “You see?” he said, and the sword began to burn.

“I think so,” Adam said. He turned the sword this way and that, and the flames cast unruly shadows over his face. He extended his other hand to Eve, who looked at the sword, and then at him. She laced her fingers with his. They turned away from Aziraphale, and toward the wide world beyond the wall of Eden.

Aziraphale stood there for a while longer after they stepped through.

“Do be careful,” he said finally. But by that time they were too far off to hear him.

He went back to his guard post, walking instead of flying because he wanted time to think. It was on the way there that the sky blazed and the air hummed and a great light fixed him where he stood, and he heard a Voice. The Voice said:

_aziraphale, where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?_

Aziraphale’s hands flew up toward his face, and then toward his wings. They were still in horrible disarray. There was nothing he could do about it now. He tried to smile. And then he responded with something that was, no matter how you looked at it, not the whole truth. It was, in fact, a bald-faced lie. Not the first one ever told, but it was up there. And thereby the angel discovered that he was actually quite good at it.

And the Lord did not ask him again.

* * *

Later, on the wall that guarded Eden, the angel and the serpent watched the first clouds gather in the eastern sky. There were several things that Crawly wanted to say to the first being that would listen, but they wouldn’t come clear in his mind. Something like: _I’m not sure what I just did._

Something like: _I’m not sure what I did wrong the first time either_ _._

Something like: _What happens now?_

He wasn’t going to say any of them, he decided. They were a little too close to honest.

“Well, that one went down like a lead balloon,” he said.

Aziraphale had things he wanted to say too. Only he’d have to think them first, and he was steadfastly not thinking them because that’s how you ended up like the serpent here, with scorch marks on your essence and a body that was no longer incorruptible, but could be cracked and twisted into any old shape.  Some things, once you broke them, stayed broken.

But he did admit to giving the sword away. He had to tell _someone_. He was too busy worrying about it to notice how Crawly looked at him then.

Aziraphale was, the serpent decided, more interesting than he had any right to be.

Eden wouldn’t last much longer, its purpose was done. But the two of them would last—of course they would, it was written. Exactly _where_ it was written was a matter still up for dispute, and would possibly remain so until after the end of days. But Crawly figured they’d meet again, and he’d see what other interesting things the angel would admit to when you caught him on the back foot.

Aziraphale, for his part, wasn’t thinking that far ahead. He was watching the clouds stack ever higher on the horizon, and thinking that in a moment the view was about to change. It was bound to be a lot less comfortable. He stretched a wing over Crawly’s head. Thunder rolled, and in the empty garden the leaves trembled at the first drops of rain.

**Author's Note:**

> the last time I wrote fic that sounded like this, I was a baby writer trying very hard to sound like Terry Pratchett. these days I sound like me and I'm pretty good at it, but it's still a me who's had this book embedded in her heart for ten years. this was a hell of a nostalgia trip, is what I'm saying.


End file.
